That's exactly it.
DTX5 is cool and all but as you said, the compression results in visual glitches and I hate those. I can't unsee them.
RMS R8 (same AO stuff as the Calibra) with DTX5 compression:
View attachment 1382804
without:
View attachment 1382805
If there's a way, somehow, to apply AO to a skin without having : visual artifacts AND a huge file I'm all ears !
"Your skins are being saved as body.dds so they effectively replace the txdetail part of the shader and then the game uses the AO form the body_diffuse.dds which is loaded with the car. So your screenshots (if that other car you have set up is the same) will all include AO whether the actual skin you made has it or not, it is grabbing the AO from txdiffuse. So not really a "no AO" comparison at all"
That's exactly what I've been doing to the cars I tinker with, so yeah, no AO needed on the skin themselves. And the Calibra should have it...
View attachment 1382808